The biggest change since Grutter, though, has nothing to do with
Court membership. It is the mounting empirical evidence that race
preferences are doing more harm than good — even for their supposed
beneficiaries. If this evidence is correct, we now have fewer
African-American physicians, scientists, and engineers than we would
have had using race-neutral admissions policies. We have fewer college
professors and lawyers, too. Put more bluntly, affirmative action has
backfired. ...

THE MISSING BLACK LAWYERS

The problem of relative performance and credential mismatch does not
end with college graduation. It extends to professional schools as well,
and is particularly evident at America's law schools. Shortly after
Cole and Barber's book was published, Mismatch co-author Richard
Sander published a study of law schools titled A Systemic Analysis of
Affirmative Action in American Law Schools. His findings were similar.
Outside of historically black colleges and universities, up and down the
law-school hierarchy, the average African-American student had an
academic index — a combination of GPA and LSAT score — more than two
standard deviations below that of his average white classmate. Indeed,
at some law schools, there was no overlap between the entering
credentials of African-American students and those of white students
(Sander did not study Hispanic students). These gaps in entering
credentials affect student performance: Sander's research demonstrated
that more than half of African-American law students had first-year GPAs
in the bottom 10% of their classes. Even critics of Sander's ultimate
conclusions agreed that these findings were both true and troubling.

Only slightly more controversial was Sander's finding that this
effect was almost entirely the result of affirmative action. When
African-American and white law students with similar entering
credentials competed against one another, they performed very close to
the same. Race-based admissions were thus creating the illusion that
African-Americans are somehow destined to be poor law students. The
truth is that, if they were attending schools where their credentials
matched the average student's, they would be just as likely to do well.

Strangely, however, African-American and white students with
identical entering credentials were not performing similarly on the bar
exam. Sander showed that the likely reason is that they are not
attending the same schools. The African-American students were more
likely to be at law schools that are more theoretical in their approach
and where "teaching to the bar exam" is considered déclassé. Rather than
benefiting from the more competitive learning environment these schools
offer, African-American students were falling behind their white
academic counterparts who were attending somewhat less competitive
schools. Sander's critics, on the other hand, had no explanation for why
white students perform better on the bar exam than African-American
students with identical credentials.

Under Sander's calculations, if law schools were to use race-neutral
admissions policies, fewer African-American students would be admitted
to law schools. But since those who were admitted would be attending
schools where they were very likely to do well, fewer would fail or drop
out. In the end, more would pass the bar exam on their first try (1,896
versus 1,567 successful African-American first-time test takers among
the graduating class of 2004) and more would eventually pass the bar
(2,150 versus 1,981 among that same class) than under current admissions
practices.

Sander's research was criticized by proponents of race-preferential
admissions on the ground that it was just one study, and Sander agreed
that more research would be desirable. He used the best and most recent
data available at the time, and his calculations have been verified by
others, but surely confirming the results with a different and more
recent database would have been useful. In a report issued in 2007, the
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights urged grant-making agencies to fund
research into this issue and requested that state bar associations
cooperate with this research.

Unfortunately, something closer to the opposite has happened. In
order to confirm his initial findings, Sander assembled an ideologically
diverse team of investigators and sought data from the State Bar of
California. Urged not to cooperate by some of the very same people who
had previously complained that Sander needed more evidence, the state
bar denied the team access. It didn't matter that Gerald Reynolds,
chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, flew to San Francisco
to ask personally for the state bar's cooperation. It didn't matter that
the data had been cheerfully shared with other researchers. The
California bar wanted no part of this important research. A court battle
is now underway.

Meanwhile, Sander and University of Arizona law professor Jane
Yakowitz Bambauer have taken to examining one the most dearly held
beliefs of affirmative-action advocates — that enrolling in the most
prestigious school one can get into is the key to success. This premise,
central to affirmative action, turns out to be false: In predicting
future income, getting good grades in law school matters more than
getting into a top law school. And as Sander and Bambauer demonstrate in The Secret of My Success: How Status, Eliteness and School Performance
Shape Legal Careers, this is true for law students generally, not just
under-represented minorities.

Put differently, aspiring lawyers who tear their hair out to get into
the most prestigious law school possible — figuring they can just
cruise to a law degree once they get to campus — are making a mistake.
They need to be putting at least as much effort into excelling once they
are in school. If students at Harvard don't work hard, their
professional stars may be eclipsed by lawyers with similar entering
credentials who attended lesser law schools and made better grades.

Again and again, the results are the same, no matter what the area of
study: Attending a highly competitive school is a good thing. But so is
getting good grades. Indeed, getting good grades is somewhat more
important than attending a prestigious school. A public policy that
ensures that African-American and Hispanic students will
disproportionately attend schools where their grades are likely to be
worse than their classmates' thus works to the minority students'
disadvantage.

TrackBack URL for this entry:$MTTrans>

Comments

Anyone who has been to college, law school or medical school recently has seen this in action (if you are older, ask your kids). Unfortunately, many who have pointed this out in the past have been called racist.

The fact of the matter is that anyone who is let in for reasons outside their academics(be it racial preferences or the so-called white privilege of "legacy") is being set up for failure. The fact remains that by and large, universities are meritocracies whereby the smartest students will rise to the top. However, and I'm going to use a boxing analogy, when you put someone above their weight class, they may succeed but chances are much better than will get crushed. As a result, you aren't doing any favors by letting a kid into Harvard law who has Cincinnati scores (just to use the Professor's school as an example).

Hopefully, the academics in charge of universities will finally realize this.

Posted by: Michael | Jan 17, 2013 7:08:01 AM

I have said this in prior posts but I think it bears repeating. Here is some great anecdotal evidence from my law school (ranked in the 50s or 60s depending on the year). Black students represented maybe 10-15% of the school, yet not a single one graduated with honors (roughly the top 20% of the class). I think it is safe to assume that any black student who had the ability or preparation to place them at the top of my class was enrolled at a much higher ranked school.

Preferences just follow these poor kids all through life. They get into a better college than they are prepared for and struggle or shift to an easy major. Then they get into a law school that is not matched to their ability or level of preparation and struggle. If they pass the Bar, due to all the diversity and inclusiveness crap they will likely get a job where their qualifications pale in comparison to their peers. This will be quite evident as they perform their work in the first few years, but diversity is so important to firms now that they will likely be given easier assignments and treated with kid gloves unless they are so bad they cannot afford to be retained. And the poor kid is left wondering if they really belong in the job they hold.

Who benefits from this system besides the people who pat themselves on the back for having such great diversity statistics?

Posted by: Todd | Jan 17, 2013 8:33:22 AM

Michael, what are you talking about? Of course you're doing kids plenty of favors admitting them into universities and colleges that their academic scores don't invite. Those universities and colleges teach the same curriculum as another other institution. And most employers who are obsessed with named schools don't give a damn what your GPA is so long as you have some "reputable" school to place beside your name on the company's website.

Posted by: Donna | Jan 17, 2013 9:34:28 AM

Donna-
No one is comparing Harvard and Cooley, which is what your comment seems to suggest. We are comparing schools that are arguably close (the A+ schools with the A-/B+ schools or the B+ schools and the B-, etc.). Yes, all things being equal, an employer will probably pick the kid from the better school. However, as the story reports, all things arent equal. The kids getting into the better schools who aren't qualified to be there are struggling.

As a result of the struggling, they won't even qualified to apply for the job. Most big law, gov't, in-demand public service, and clerking jobs have very stringent hiring requirements (ie top % in class, certain gpa etc). As a result, if you went to a school you weren't qualified for your school and thus have crummy grades, you don't even have the chance to apply. Additionally, its not just the school name that employers care about, they also want to list your law review article, honors, dean's list etc. and for the kids who struggled these don't exist. So yeah, you may be able to tick the box for "school" (since this is not just a top school issue) and "minority" but you miss out on all the accomplishment boxes. My guess is youd be much better off having gone to the slightly worse ranked school and kicking butt, then you may miss out on the "school" box but you'd have all the accomplishment boxes, which are definitely more important for that first job.

Posted by: Michael | Jan 18, 2013 6:32:53 AM

Affirmative action is somewhat like many college football programs that successfully recruit top black players based upon their athletic ability rather than success in the classroom -- once the players have served their purpose, those who have smugly congratulated themselves for getting them to join the team don't care if the players graduate or are ready for jobs outside of football.

I'm left with a sad hunch that affirmative action persists not so much because it's supposed to give underrepresented minorities a professional education but because it's supposed to give the white kids a social education.

Posted by: Twononymous | Jan 18, 2013 1:56:42 PM

Donna,

The thing your post seems to miss is that AA has a cascade effect down the school hierarchy. To use California schools as an example, it may be true that a kid that gets into Stanford or Berkeley is better off even if he doesn't do well academically. But is also true for the kid that gets into UCLA or USC? What about Davis? What about Pepperdine or Hastings? Loyola? Santa Clara?

At some point (and I would say that point is right after Stanford or Berkeley), the school name is no longer enough of a big deal to make up for the poor performance.

Posted by: john | Jan 18, 2013 2:31:38 PM

Social engineering always has its unwanted consequences which the proponents of affirmative actions don't want to talk about. You can only end racial discrimination by ending racial discrimination, not by starting a new kind of racial discrimination.

Self-righteous social engineering always fails. And once again, so eloquently argued by Prof. Gail Heriot in her well-written essay "The Sad Irony of Affirmative Action".

I find the suggestion that legacies aren't benefiting from going to a higher ranked college fairly remarkable. Their parents are rich, well educated, successful, and intelligent.

They generally don't waste their money.

So why would all of these successful people be throwing away money to get their kid into a top school if they didn't think it would help them later in life? Why all of the donations and committee work and extracurriculars and sports for their kids? Why the high-priced private K-12 education?

Why aren't rich parents scouting out the schools with the dumbest kids they can find so that they're kids can get straight As?

Something is fishy about these affirmative action critiques. It's do as we say, not as we do.

Posted by: Anon | Jan 20, 2013 12:29:58 PM

I am a disabled attorney. Once I earned my JD from a first-tier law school, I spent years unemployed but not for want of trying. I applied for literally thousands of jobs and with the Army JAG. Without exception, I was rejected from each one. The scumbag proponents of "diversity" for gays and women should answer to the disabled. As a group, our poverty rate is over 25% (a rate comparable to American Indians) but no one, NO ONE is advocating for us.

The crapola about "unconscious bias" is nonsense. Disabled people are entirely invisible and tragically coalitions for the able-bodied (i.e., NAACP, NOW, and GLAAD spring to mind) seeking to remedy this problem of unconscious bias just entrench the problem.

Law firms that tout being "family friendly" are the worst offenders. For years I used to scan the National Association of Law Placement (NALP) to see what firms might hire the disabled. Without exception, no top 100 law firm had ANY disabled lawyers or partners. These were the same law firms that trumpet how gay and family friendly they are. It is POINTLESS FOR THE DISABLED TO GET LAW DEGREES BECAUSE THEY WILL NEVER GET HIRED BY A LAW FIRM AND NEVER REPAY THEIR CRUSHING LAW SCHOOL DEBTS.

Might I add, debts made increasingly by the practice of capitalizing unpaid debt back into the principal if the student should fall ill and become unable to repay it. After graduation, I diligently repaid my private loans until the day I fell ill. I was proud to see the principal fall until then. One year later when I returned to work, the principal was even larger than the day after I graduated. I will NEVER REPAY my loans until the day I retire.

Until society opens up for its disabled members, affirmative action remains a bright and shining lie.